U.S. patent application number 12/218842 was filed with the patent office on 2010-07-29 for software method and system to enable automatic, real-time extraction of item price and availability from a supplier catalog during a buyer's electronic procurement shopping process.
Invention is credited to Gary Charles Berkowitz, Charles Christopher Wurtz.
Application Number | 20100191616 12/218842 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 42354920 |
Filed Date | 2010-07-29 |
United States Patent
Application |
20100191616 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
Berkowitz; Gary Charles ; et
al. |
July 29, 2010 |
Software method and system to enable automatic, real-time
extraction of item price and availability from a supplier catalog
during a buyer's electronic procurement shopping process
Abstract
The present invention, termed the Interactive Organic Agent
(IOA), augments electronic procurement shopping software with
functionality that enables the purchasing organization to capture,
in real-time, any changes in supplier item price and availability,
as the buyer (user) is shopping or browsing the buyer-side remote
catalog index. In particular, as the buyer is viewing
remote-catalog pages of items that have been selected as the result
of a search, or simply via browsing, the IOA automatically, without
any required user action, makes a direct connection to the live
supplier online site(s) that correspond to the items being viewed,
and then retrieves the latest price & availability data. Via
the use of knowledge-capture and artificial intelligence (including
an Organic Profile Language) to trigger an operation termed
"Organic Punch-out", the IOA generates a background connection to a
live vendor site only when, and only long enough as, necessary to
retrieve updated item information, without any direct action by the
buyer.
Inventors: |
Berkowitz; Gary Charles;
(Centennial, CO) ; Wurtz; Charles Christopher;
(Los Alamos, NM) |
Correspondence
Address: |
Gary C Berkowitz
7778 S. Poplar Way
Centennial
CO
80112
US
|
Family ID: |
42354920 |
Appl. No.: |
12/218842 |
Filed: |
July 19, 2008 |
Related U.S. Patent Documents
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Application
Number |
Filing Date |
Patent Number |
|
|
60961167 |
Jul 19, 2007 |
|
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Current U.S.
Class: |
705/26.1 |
Current CPC
Class: |
G06Q 30/00 20130101;
G06Q 30/0601 20130101 |
Class at
Publication: |
705/27 |
International
Class: |
G06Q 30/00 20060101
G06Q030/00 |
Claims
1. A software method for enabling an electronic procurement buyer
to capture, in real-time, any changes in item price and
availability, as the buyer is viewing remote-catalog pages of items
that have been selected as the result of a search, or simply via
browsing, such that the buyer, without any required buyer action,
is directly connected to the live supplier online site(s) that
correspond to the items being viewed, and the latest price &
availability data are retrieved automatically, and the data is then
handed off to the Assisted Organic Agent for incorporation into the
remote index.
2. A computer system comprising: a first storage device for storing
a plurality of previously submitted find-trees; a processor
connected to the first storage device, with the processor
configured for: enabling an electronic procurement buyer to
capture, in real-time, any changes in item price and availability,
as the buyer is viewing remote-catalog pages of items that have
been selected as the result of a search, or simply via browsing,
such that the buyer, without any required buyer action, is directly
connected to the live supplier online site(s) that correspond to
the items being viewed, and the latest price & availability
data are retrieved automatically, and the data is then handed off
to the Assisted Organic Agent for incorporation into the remote
index.
Description
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
[0001] This application claims benefit of, and incorporates by
reference in whole, the provisional application: [0002] A Software
Method and System to Enable Automatic, Real-Time Extraction of Item
Price and Availability from a Supplier Catalog During a Buyer's
Electronic Procurement Shopping Process [0003] Application No.
60/961,167, Filing Date Jul. 19, 2007, [0004] Inventors: Gary C.
Berkowitz & Charles C. Wurtz.
[0005] This application claims benefit of the prior filed
co-pending applications: [0006] Knowledge-based e-catalog
procurement system and method [0007] application Ser. No.
10/215,109 Filing Date Aug. 8, 2002 [0008] Inventors: Gary C.
Berkowitz, D. Serebrennikov, B. M. Roe, C. C. Wurtz [0009] Virtual
Supercomputer [0010] application Ser. No. 10/821,582 Filing Date
Apr. 9, 2004 [0011] Inventors: Gary C. Berkowitz & Charles C.
Wurtz.
STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT
[0012] Not Applicable
REFERENCE TO SEQUENCE LISTING, A TABLE, OR A COMPUTER PROGRAM
LISTING COMPACT DISK APPENDIX
[0013] This application incorporates by reference, in whole, the
material contained in the computer program listing appendix
submitted with this application on two (2) identical copies of a
CD-R (read only) compact disc, containing one (1) file, named
PunchThruQuery Code Implementation--USPTO ASCII.txt.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
[0014] 1. Field of the Invention
[0015] The present invention is directed toward the field of
electronic procurement systems. More specifically, the technology
described in this patent application relates to a system and method
to enable the automatic, real-time extraction of price and
availability of particular supplier electronic-catalog items during
the buyer's shopping experience.
[0016] 2. Description of the Related Art
[0017] A pending utility patent application (Knowledge-based
e-catalog procurement system and method, U.S. Ser. No. 10/215,109)
provides a solution to one of the fundamental problems of
business-to-business (B2B) Internet commerce, which is the ability
to electronically shop a heterogeneous mix of vendors, or
suppliers, whose catalog contents appear in a variety of formats,
and further, the ability of an organization to capture and store
the shopping patterns and choices of its buyers (shoppers), and to
make this evolving knowledge available to the entire organization.
The IntelleCat system is part of the method, termed Organic
Computing, which forms the foundation of an array of inventions
that are the subject of this and related applications.
[0018] Unlike any other known e-procurement method, the IntelleCat
system, in its current embodiment, creates a dynamic, evolving,
network-enabled Remote Index of a heterogeneous mix of supplier
catalog items, that may exist in a variety of electronic formats,
or not in electronic format at all. This index allows a buyer (that
is, a user in the purchasing organization) to browse, search and
select items from a fast, secure buyer-side data store, which spans
multiple suppliers and formats, and contains virtual images (data
replicas) of every item available across these multiple vendor
sites, without the need for being directly connected, in most
cases, to any supplier (vendor) electronic (web) site. This direct
connection, often termed "punch-out", is kept to a minimum in the
IntelleCat system.
[0019] The remote index evolves via the actions of three separate,
but interrelated, inventions. The first, termed the Autonomous
Organic Agent, and the subject of a separate provisional patent
application, continually operates in the background, crawling
supplier websites to extract elementary information pertaining to
structure, format, and access rules for a particular site. From
this information, it builds a template for that particular supplier
(vendor), and then incorporates the template into the remote index,
as a foundation for further refinement and optimization of the
buyer-supplier relationship.
[0020] A second invention, termed the Assisted Organic Agent (AOA),
which is also the subject of a separate provisional patent
application, works in the background to continually crawl supplier
websites that have already been characterized by the Autonomous
Organic Agent, and gathers updates on the price, availability, and
other meta-data, for items in supplier catalogs. This information,
too, is then incorporated into the remote index. The Assisted
Organic Agent also captures and stores into the remote index the
buying patterns of the purchasing organization, and thus maintains
an evolving profile of the "intentionality" of the purchasing
organization, which enables the software to optimize the
relationship between buyer and supplier, without external human
intervention.
[0021] A third invention, and the subject of the present
application, is termed the IntelleCat Interactive Organic Agent
(IOA), in its preferred embodiment. The IOA augments IntelleCat
with functionality that enables the purchasing organization to
capture, in real-time, any changes in item price and availability,
as the buyer (user) is shopping or browsing the buyer-side catalog
index. In particular, as the buyer (user) is viewing remote-catalog
pages of items that have been selected as the result of a search,
or simply via browsing, the IOA automatically, without any required
user action, makes a direct connection to the live supplier online
site(s) that correspond to the items being viewed, and retrieves
the latest price & availability data, which is then handed off
to the AOA for incorporation into the remote index.
[0022] There are no known current technologies that provide this
functionality.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0023] All web-based or other catalogs that are available online
are designed to enable human users to access and "shop" the
catalog. What the present invention accomplishes is to minimize the
interaction between the buyer and the supplier (vendor), via the
use of knowledge-capture and artificial intelligence (including an
Organic Profile Language) to trigger operations termed "Organic
Punch-out", or "Punch-Through Queries", that generate a background
connection to a live vendor site only when, and only long enough
as, necessary to retrieve updated item information, without any
direct action by the buyer. In particular, four key functional
aspects of the IOA are: [0024] It implements a method of
automatically extracting in real-time any updated information on
price and availability of particular vendor items (SKUs) from
online supplier catalogs, which is then passed to the Assisted
Organic Agent for maintaining the dynamic remote index. [0025] The
invention also allows this punch-through procedure to be disenabled
should contractual negotiations between buyer and supplier generate
a mutual agreement that the actions of the IOA would be problematic
from a commercial perspective. [0026] The IOA allows the separation
of current pricing data from current availability data in
real-time, such that they are not linked, and therefore
availability can be given a higher priority than pricing, and
vice-versa. [0027] This differentiation of price and availability
enables the electronic procurement process across multiple vendors
to balance the priorities of obtaining price and availability data,
thus allowing the purchasing organization to implement the most
efficient supply-chain management, and the most effective use of
electronic procurement resources.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0028] FIG. 1 shows a screen image of the operation of the IOA as
it retrieves live price and availability data for the previously
found Internet Punch-out SKUs from the supplier's Internet
Punch-out website.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
[0029] The detailed description of the present invention also
incorporates by reference, in whole, the computer program listing
appendix submitted with this application on duplicate CD-R discs,
as referenced at the beginning of the Specification.
[0030] This section, along with the code implementation, provides a
detailed functional and technical description of the product named
IntelleCat Interactive Organic Agent (IOA), which is the preferred
embodiment of the present invention, and is a component of a
product named IntelleCat, a patent-pending knowledge-based
e-catalog procurement system (Knowledge-based e-catalog procurement
system and method, U.S. application Ser. No. 10/215,109).
DEFINITIONS
[0031] 1) Assisted Organic Agent. Also known as mini-crawls. This
agent enhances the data surrounding a `new` item that a user has
found to be useful, and/or expand the known area after a `lite`
initial crawl. [0032] 2) Autonomous Organic Agent: Also known as
the base crawl, this is the first crawl that is run against a site.
[0033] 3) Interactive Organic Agent. Also known as Punch-Thru Query
(PTQ), this is the type of interaction where the user is looking
for something, but is unaware that IntelleCat is `following along`
behind the scenes and remembering what is found.
Crawling:
[0034] When crawling a site, links are categorized into three
categories (and their corresponding action items): [0035] 1) A link
that leads to a page. In this case, the link is expanded. [0036] 2)
A link that is a page. If the link is an item page, an attempt is
made to parse the page. [0037] 3) A link that does not lead to a
page. The link is excluded.
[0038] Requirement: For large sites, the queue of links to follow
can become huge. In order to not use up memory unnecessarily, this
queue is persisted to disk. This also helps make crawls
restartable, which is a requirement for both the base crawl and
subsequent mini-crawls. As time goes on, there will be less
difference between the base crawl and subsequent mini-crawls.
Indexing
[0039] The index includes both items, and other meta-data about the
site. For example, a complete list of categories that are
meaningful for a given site.
[0040] When a page is parsed and then an item are indexed, the
following fields are set during indexing: [0041] 1) Title [0042] 2)
Category path [0043] 3) Description (long description) [0044] 4)
Price [0045] 5) UOM [0046] 6) Image [0047] 7) Availability
[0048] A unique key for a given index is determined. Typically it
is defined by the <part number>, but in some cases it is
<part number>+<UOM>.
The Improved Base Crawl:
[0049] A new approach to base crawls is that the site crawl just
gathers category information but very little other data. This
enables PTQ to know more about what it's likely to find on a given
site, and then dynamically search it in response to a specific
request.
Profile Parameters:
[0050] The following list contains a number of fields that can be
defined on a per-profile basis, although they may default to
standard values in some eases: [0051] 1) Wait-time value: This
shows the `typical` wait time to get results for a query from a
given site. This lets the UI decide whether or not it should wait
for results from a given PTQ before displaying total results.
Question: How do we get a statistically accurate value for this?
Also, it will likely be different between test and production.
[0052] 2). Crawl depth. [0053] 3) FTP values, if any.
Crawl Threading:
[0054] Some sites get confused if they are being crawled by more
than one thread. If this is the case for a site, the number of
crawling threads is set to just one, and the crawler then goes back
and access the URLs returned by the crawling thread from any number
of accessor threads.
[0055] Timeouts are in the PTQ code for several reasons: [0056] 1)
The site could be down. [0057] 2) The interne connection is down
[0058] 3) Other failures, especially if the network fails in the
middle of servicing a PTQ request.
[0059] In addition to bona-fide timeouts, other types of errors can
occur. For example, each site will have one or more error pages,
sometimes with useful data contained therein. Another function of
the PTQ drive is to punch out to the PO site when there are too
many results to display. This function then runs the site's search
engine, using the current top in IntelleSearch, and takes the user
to the search results page for browsing.
Regional Sites
[0060] Some punch-out sites are `regional`, meaning that there is
one site, but that responds differently depending on who comes in.
For example, Sigma US and Sigma UK are actually the same site.
[0061] This `regionality` doesn't necessarily have to be related to
different countries; it could be for different geographic regions
within the same country.
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